JO: Please tell us a little about yourself.

JIM: I have two teenage sons who are both outstanding kids. Taylor is a senior in high school, Micah is in 9^th grade. I've been married to the love of my life for 24 years and we have one cat, T-Bone, who thinks he's human. We live in the Pacific Northwest. People tell me I'm in my late forties but I think they're wrong. I'm really twenty-eight.

JO: What do you enjoying doing when you're not writing?

JIM: Sleep. That's all there's time for these days. To be serious, writing does take a ton of time, but when I'm not at the laptop I like water skiing and dirt biking with my boys and hanging out with my wife.

JO: Can you tell us any fun thing about you that might surprise our readers?

JIM: Most people are surprised to learn that I used to do magic shows for corporate parties. That's one of my hobbies that went by the wayside when the writing career started. And I'm okay on the guitar.

JO: How did you get involved in writing?

JIM: The bug bit hard after I read The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid. And when my story was chosen in my 7^th grade English class to be acted out by the class I knew I wanted to be an author someday.

JO: Where do you write? Do you have a dedicated office or a corner or nook in a room?

JO: When you wrote Rooms did you know the title before you wrote it or after you finished it?

JIM: Way after. The first few titles were awful. I wrestled and wrestled to come up with something strong and continued to strike out. Then about six months after I finished the manuscript the title Rooms popped into my mind without even thinking about the story and I knew that was it.

JIM: You mean God planting it in my head like a light bulb? No. With Book of Days the title was obvious, same thing with The Chair. For my fourth novel, Taylor came up with the story idea and the name of the book: Back Space. (It looks like we're going to write the book together which will be really fun.)

JO: Please tell us about Rooms.

JIM: It's the story of a young software tycoon who inherits a home on the Oregon coast that turns out to be a physical manifestation of his soul. (This is where people either say, "Ooooooo, sounds cool," or "Uh, sounds little too weird for me.")

It's set in Cannon Beach, a small, beautiful tourist town on the north Oregon coast. Along with my protagonist, Micah Taylor (want to guess where I got that name?) Rooms stars Sarah Sabin, who works at the ice cream shop in town and who becomes romantically involved with Micah, and Rick the town mechanic who is much more than he appears to be.

I realize I should be targeting a specific demographic with my books, but truly I simply write the books that won't stop bouncing around my brain. Rooms is a book that has been read by teens as well as those in their 80s, both male and female, so I'd have to say it's for anyone that likes fiction.

JO: What takeaway value do you hope readers receive after reading your novel?

JIM: Freedom, freedom, and more freedom. Christ said he came to heal the broken hearted and set the captives free. That's what I hope He does for people through Rooms. And it's happening. I can't believe the number of e-mails I've received from people that tell me the book had a massive impact on them. Makes all the hours writing worthwhile.

JO: Where did you get the idea for Rooms?

JIM: Too many comic books as a kid. When I was a teenager I read a little pamphlet called My Heart, Christ's Home that spoke to me deeply. I always thought you could take that allegory, set it in a real place, and create a powerful story. I mixed in some of It's a Wonderful Life, The Screwtape Letters, The Twilight Zone, some romance and out came Rooms.

JO: Did you need to do any research for this book?

JO: How long have you been writing?

JIM: I've dabbled in fiction since I was a kid, but I didn't get serious about writing a novel till around 2002, 2003.

JIM: Rooms is the first novel I've written and the first one I've sold. People say it seems like an overnight success, but my degree is in Broadcast Journalism and I've run an ad agency/marketing firm since '94 so I've worked on the craft of writing for over twenty years. I just hadn't focused my writing skills on fiction till Rooms came along.

To answer your question more specifically, I went to my first writing conference in the spring of '06, got an agent six months later, and we sold Rooms in June of '08.

JO: How do you find time to write?

JIM: I have a good friend with a PhD in physics and he's taught me how to add four hours to every day. I write then. That's a good question, Jo. It's whenever I can grab a moment. Sometimes it's a few hours, sometimes it's twenty minutes. It is my biggest challenge.

JO: What are you working on now?

JIM: As we speak I'm working on final edits (going over the copy edits) on Book of Days, which releases in January. And I'm working on the first draft of my third novel, The Chair, which comes out in the fall of 2011.

Rooms is now published in French, Dutch, I voiced the audio version in late July, there's a hard cover large print version coming out and there's a bidding war going on right now in Brazil. So I'm trying to keep up with all that and continue to promote it when and where I can.

JO: What advice would you give to writers just starting out?

JO: Please tell our readers where they can get Rooms.

JIM: Just about everywhere. LifeWay, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon, Family Christian Stores, CBD, etc.

JO: Where can our readers find you?

JIM: On the Web at: jimrubart.com or barefootmarketing.com;  on facebook I'm: James L. Rubart; and on Twitter: @jimrubart

JO: Jim, thanks for spending time with my readers and for the copy of Rooms, which one of them will receive in a drawing.